Trouble with running cd with sudo as another user

Question

I want to run a command on a shell on behalf of another user. The command is as follows:

sudo -u USER cd /home/USER

I get

sudo: cd: command not found

What is the correct syntax for the command to pass to sudo?

Answer 1

cd is a shell builtin. You need to invoke shell for executing shell builtins:

sudo -u USER sh -c 'cd /home/USER'

OR

sudo -u USER bash -c 'cd /home/USER'

Answer 2

cd is not an external command, it is only a shell builtin, so sudo cannot execute it. The reason why cd only exists as a shell builtin is that a process cannot affect the current directory of another process; therefore a program that changes the current directory and exits immediately is useless. (Almost useless: a cd program would return a status that indicates whether it was successful.)

If you want to change to a directory and then run commands as another user, run a shell that does all that.

sudo -u SOMEUSER sh -c 'cd /path/to/directory && dosomething'

Answer 3

I tend to use:sudo su - USERNAME and then do what you need as that user. To quit just type exit